Three ways to strengthen your B2B marketing
While business-to-business marketing can present unique opportunities and challenges, at the center of it is the familiar media and marketing tenet that drives campaigns across all industries: know thine audience. And in the B2B world, that audience isn’t as straightforward as you might think.
The core of B2B marketing
To understand your B2B audience, you need to know exactly who makes the purchase, who influences the purchaser, and the details of the purchase cycle. “If you’re selling a product or a service to a single consumer, there’s only one decision-maker you have to convince,” MKR VP of Media Kristine Warski explains. “But for a B2B brand, that audience can expand exponentially. Department heads, financial officers, technical experts, and beyond all become unique audiences of that same singular sales journey. And your media plan needs to reflect that.”
For B2B brands, there’s often a multitude of audiences that utilize products and services in different ways. So it comes back to knowing your audience and how to speak to them specifically, individually, and uniquely. “They need to know the technical information, but they also need to understand the emotional benefits that they will receive after they purchase and use the product or service.”
Knowing all that, here are three ways you can improve your B2B marketing.
Champion brand awareness
B2B brands often make the mistake of limiting their long-term success by only focusing on short-term sales. For Kristine, brand awareness shouldn’t be an afterthought for your marketing efforts. “Strengthening your brand awareness beyond only shortening the sales cycle will not only open doors for your sales team, but provide a more sustainable path for years to come. It’s not just about making one sale, it’s about building a foundation to make many sales.”
Align sales and marketing
When your sales team and your marketing team are unaligned it can often seem like no matter how many leads your marketing is bringing in, none of them are any good. Kristine recommends utilizing a customer relationship management (CRM) system to close that gap. “A fully-operational CRM system is a must to get sales and marketing on the same page.”
Invest in lead nurturing
A comprehensive account-based marketing (ABM) approach is the best way to move from getting leads to closing sales. An ABM platform will allow you to properly nurture prospects through the sales funnel and provide information to prospects when and where they need it, in an effort to convert them into satisfied customers. “Adopting an ABM system helps take prospects from unaware, to interested, to sold,” Kristine says. “But it also helps maintain those relationships long after a sale, creating future opportunities for product add-ons and upsells when new generations of your products release.”
Looking for complete B2B marketing support from experts in the field? We’re happy to chat. You can contact MKR right here.